A few days after the scene described at the end of our last chapter, the Court set out on a visit to Lord and Lady Harcourt at Nuneham. The arrangement was that the royal party should pass the first day with their host and hostess; spend the second and third in excursions to Oxford and Blenheim respectively, sleeping each night at Nuneham; and return the fourth day to Windsor. Miss Burney was informed that she was to be one of her Majesty’s suite. In making this communication to her, Mrs. Schwellenberg took occasion to say: ‘I tell you once, I shall do for you what I can; you are to have a gown!’ Seeing Fanny draw back in surprise at this abrupt speech, the important old lady added: ‘The Queen will give you a gown; the Queen says you are not rich.’ Offended at the grossness with which the intended gracious present was offered, our inexperienced Court servant declared a wish to decline it. Her superior instantly flew into a passion. ‘Miss Bernar,’ cried she, quite angrily, ‘I tell you once, when the Queen will give you a gown,[[76]] you must be humble, thankful, when you are Duchess of Ancaster!’ Before the journey to Nuneham took place, Fanny, rather unwisely, expressed her regret that she had some time previously neglected an opportunity of being introduced to the lady whose house she was about to visit; she had met Lord Harcourt, she said, and thought it might have smoothed her way to know something of his Countess also. She was promptly told that she was utterly insignificant—that, going with the Queen, she was sure of civil treatment; but that whether or not she had a servant, or any change of dress, was of no consequence. ‘There[‘There] is no need,’ said the senior Robe-Keeper, ‘that you should be seen. I shall do everything that I can to assist you to appear for nobody.’
In fact, the whole expedition might have seemed to be planned for the purpose of convincing her that any importance she had once enjoyed was now absolutely gone. Their Majesties went to Nuneham to breakfast. Miss Burney followed in the afternoon, with Miss Planta, English teacher of the Princesses, Mrs. Thielky, the Queen’s wardrobe-woman, and one or two more of the royal attendants. On their arrival, they found the house to be ‘one of those straggling, half-new, half-old, half-comfortable, and half-forlorn mansions, that are begun in one generation and finished in another.’ We have a graphic and amusing description of accidents encountered and discomforts endured, before the hapless and helpless diarist was settled for the night: the being handed from her carriage by a common postilion; the deserted hall, where not even a porter was to be seen; the entire absence of a welcome, the whole family being in the Park, with the King and Queen and Princesses, and the mistress of the house having deputed no one to act for her; the want of assistance in searching for her apartment; the wanderings through unknown mazy passages; the ‘superfine men in yellow-laced liveries’ occasionally met sauntering along, who disdained to waste a word in answer to inquiries; the sitting down at length in despair in a room destined for one of the Princesses; the alarm at being surprised there by its owner and her sisters; the subsequent promises, only made to be broken, of guidance to the wished-for haven; and finally, when that haven had at last been reached, the humiliation of being summoned to supper by a gentleman-footman haughtily calling out from the foot of the stairs, ‘The equerries want the ladies!’ It is impossible to read the account of these ‘difficulties and disgraces’ without seeing that the shy, sensitive, flattered novel-writer had indeed mistaken her vocation when she accepted service in a royal household.
The next day was Sunday, and was appointed to be observed, after due attendance at Church, by a visit to the University of Oxford. Late on Saturday night, Miss Burney received the Queen’s commands to belong to the suite on the morrow, and rejoiced exceedingly that she had brought with her a new Chambéry gauze, instead of only the dress she wore, according to her Cerbera’s advice. We abridge Fanny’s narrative of her laborious Sabbath:
“August 13th.—At six o’clock my hairdresser, to my great satisfaction, arrived. Full two hours was he at work, yet was I not finished, when Swarthy, the Queen’s hairdresser, came rapping at my door, to tell me her Majesty’s hair was done, and she was waiting for me. I hurried as fast as I could, and ran down without any cap. She smiled at sight of my hasty attire, and said I should not be distressed about a hairdresser the next day, but employ Swarthy’s assistant, as soon as he had done with the Princesses: ‘You should have had him,’ she added, ‘to-day, if I had known you wanted him.’
“When her Majesty was dressed, all but the hat, she sent for the three Princesses; and the King came also. I felt very foolish with my uncovered head; but it was somewhat the less awkward, from its being very much a custom, in the Royal Family, to go without caps; though none that appear before them use such a freedom.
“As soon as the hat was on—‘Now, Miss Burney,’ said the Queen, ‘I won’t keep you; you had better go and dress too.’”
Breakfast and morning service followed, and then came the Oxford expedition:
“How many carriages there were, and how they were arranged, I observed not sufficiently to recollect; but the party consisted of their Majesties, the Princesses Royal, Augusta, and Elizabeth, the Duchess of Ancaster, Lord and Lady Harcourt, Lady Charlotte Bertie, and the two Miss Vernons. These last ladies are daughters of the late Lord Vernon, and sisters of Lady Harcourt. General Harcourt, Colonel Fairly, and Major Price, and Mr. Hagget, with Miss Planta and myself, completed the group. Miss Planta and I, of course, as the only undignified persons, brought up the rear.... The city of Oxford afforded us a very noble view on the road, and its spires, towers, and domes soon made me forget all the little objects of minor spleen that had been crossing me as I journeyed towards them; and, indeed, by the time I arrived in the midst of them, their grandeur, nobility, antiquity, and elevation impressed my mind so forcibly, that I felt, for the first time since my new situation had taken place, a rushing in of ideas that had no connection with it whatever. The roads were lined with decently-dressed people, and the high street was so crowded we were obliged to drive gently and carefully, to avoid trampling the people to death. Yet their behaviour was perfectly respectful and proper. Nothing could possibly be better conducted than the whole of this expedition.‘
The royal party were received by the Vice-Chancellor, and all the heads of colleges and professors then in residence, who conducted them in state to the Theatre, which was crowded with spectators. The King took his seat, with his head covered, on the Chancellor’s chair, the Queen and Princesses sitting below him to the left. An address, which was read by the Vice-Chancellor, contained, among other expressions of loyalty, the congratulations of the University to the King on his recent escape from the knife of Margaret Nicholson; at the same time touching on the distress which the attempt had occasioned the Queen, and paying a tribute to her amiable and virtuous character.
“The Queen could scarcely bear it, though she had already, I doubt not, heard it at Nuneham, as these addresses must be first read in private, to have the answers prepared. Nevertheless, this public tribute of loyalty to the King, and of respect to herself, went gratefully to her heart, and filled her eyes with tears—which she would not, however, encourage, but, smiling through them, dispersed them with her fan, with which she was repeatedly obliged to stop their course down her cheeks. The Princesses, less guarded, the moment their father’s danger was mentioned, wept with but little control....